The Z word

I LOVE zombies! They are scary as hell, disgusting, relentless, remorseless, fearless, and they come by the dozens! Perfect monsters for a Dungeon Master 🙂

Zombie minis on the market are of uneven quality, and available in various degrees of ‘realism’. So, if you want a swarm of nice looking zombies for your gaming table, it can get quite expensive.

It is hard to vary the poses enough to get very different looking zombies (lots of extended arms). But still, the overall effect of the horde is quite cool.

That’s why I got interested in Mantic Games line of minis. They are much cheaper than most minis out there, quite detailed and less cartoonish than Games Workshop plastic minis. My first order with this company was for a pack of zombies (later, I also purchased 2 packs of orcs, which you can find in some other posts on this blog).

For my zombies, I got inspired by a good tutorial on YouTube from Girl Painting (look at this video channel: great stuff!).

For the blood, I used a technique I found on the web (this forum presents the technique). I bought a bottle of Tamiya Clear Red. This paint is a translucent varnish-like red. It smells awful and dries glossy. When you mix it with tiny amounts of acrylic black paint, the paint-varnish “coagulates” (how appropriate!) and really does look like blood. It is just FANTASTIC.

Lots of washes were used to give the skin these blue, purple and red-brown tones.

This zombie is holding a severed head in his right hand… B..R..A..I..N..S…

The bases on my minis are not done yet: I want to make a display base for the whole zombie horde (I have a diorama idea, but I still want to keep my minis “detachable” so I can use them on the gaming table). I think I will use magnets on the bases to keep them securely on the display base surface.